Posted
by
timothy
on Friday July 01, 2011 @09:46PM
from the demonization-has-its-downsides dept.

daria42 writes "After four long years of debate about whether Australia will receive a mandatory Internet filter, finally some action has been taken. Yesterday the country's largest ISP, Telstra, started filtering all customers' connections for child pornography. The filter is DNS-based, meaning it's easy to circumvent, but you can't opt out of it — if you sign up to a plan with Telstra, your connection will be filtered for certain web addresses whether you like it or not. "

Child porn will be blocked first. However, the problem with internet censorship is that other material (such as political material, eg. WikiLeaks) could also be blocked eventually. The first rule of censorship is to not talk about it; it's ironic that we don't know what websites are going to be blocked.
Bad stuff has already been done because of the filter anyway. Look at Bulletproof Networks - they were threatened fines of $11,000 per day for linking to a leak of the blacklist.

Using OpenDNS or Google DNS messes with content distribution networks. I don't recommend using them.

There's many reasons to run your own DNS:* Improved performance, even if small.* Avoid ISP incompetence (plenty ISP's don't honor refresh/expiry times or otherwise deliver a sub-optimal DNS service.)* Ability to include alternative TLD's.* To apply your own filtering (for everyone in the home).* Use DNSSEC if your ISP doesn't.* Run your own internal domain (e.g. for development purposes.)* Hosting your own DNS and website from your home server.